Jailbreak

Cydia

If you ever get just a bit bored with Apple’s ‘slide to unlock’ bar on the lock screen, which has been there since the beginning, then a new free jailbreak tweak dubbed CamTap by iOS development team HASHBANG Productions is now available in the BigBoss repository of Cydia that will change things up just a little bit.

CamLock basically eliminates the ‘slide to unlock’ bar altogether on the lock screen, however it leaves the Camera Grabber, and centers it on the lock screen. The new look eliminates all clutter, however it also changes the way you unlock your device and open the Camera application from the lock screen.

After installing the tweak, you will have to swipe up on the Camera Grabber to unlock the device – you will see the same animation that you usually see after sliding the slider to unlock. To open the Camera application instead of unlocking the device, you’ll have to simply tap on the Camera Grabber.

For some, this tweak may be preferred because of efficiency, however from a design perspective, it’s odd to use the Camera Grabber to unlock the device, and even odder to tap on a grabber object to cause anything to happen. Grabbers are usually used throughout iOS as a way to hold and drag to cause something to happen, so it just doesn't seem to fit.

Nevertheless, CamTap is a free jailbreak tweak and has no options to configure. You can grab it from Cydia right now.

Why not make it so you can just randomly slide any where on the screen? At least that is how I notice my friends with the S3 unlock the their phones. They may be a tweak in Cydia that already does that.....I'm not sure.